Dispenser



Jan. 27, 1959, v H. HUELDEN DISPENSER Filed July 22, 1955 IN V EN TOR;

BY M5 llrraeA/eys.

United States Patent DISPENSER Heinrich Huelden, La Crescenta, Calif, assignor to Hansen-Lynn 'Co., Inc., Burbank, Calif, a corporation of California Application July 22, 1955, Serial No. 523,683

Claims. 01. 241-222 This invention relates to dispensers and is particularly concerned with a dispensing device which stores frangible vvafer-like tablets and dispenses them singly in fractured orm.

It is an object of the invention to provide a dispenser in which such tablets may be stored in their original container, sealed off from the atmosphere to prevent their deterioration, and in which one tablet at a time may be dispensed therefrom by simple manual actions.

Effervescent drinks are often made by dissolving a tablet composed of particular materials in a liquid such as water. In an etfort to improve the quality of the drink,

the time for dissolution of the tablet was decreased by crushing the tablet prior to placing it into the liquid.

This approach has notbeen satisfactory because the finepowder resulting from the crushing dissolved too rapidly, thereby creating other problems.

A further object of the invention is to provide a dispenser which fractures a tablet into granular segments while producing a minimum of fine powder or dust by passing the tablet between complementary concave and convex rollers which are spaced so that there is no crushing action between them. 3

Another-object of the invention is to provide a dispenser having a base for receiving the open end of a container of tablets anda removable housing enclosing the container and holding the container in position on the base.

A still further object is to provide an improved dispense ing instrument in a self-contained device for the speedy counter preparation of effervescent drinks without the necessity for clamping same to a rigid support.

The invention also comprises novel details of construction and novel combinations and arrangements of parts which will more fully appear in the course of the following description. The drawings merely show and the description merely describes a preferred embodiment of H the present invention which is given by way of illustraa tion or example.

In the drawings:

Fig. 1 is an isometric view of the preferred embodiment of the invention; p i

Fig. 2 is a side elevation of the embodiment of Fig. 1 shown partly in section;

Fig. 3 is a sectional view taken along the line 3-3 of Fig. 2;

Fig. 4 is a partial sectional view taken along the hue base has a flat upper portion 13 and a shoulder 14 around 12,870,967 Patented Jan. 27, 1959 the edge thereof, the housing 12 having a corresponding shoulder 15 mating with the shoulder 14 and providing a substantially dust-tight seal between the base and the housing. A groove 20 in the fiat upper section 13 is covered by a plate 21, the plate 21having a substantially vertical opening 22 therethrough. The upper portion 23' of the opening 22 has a larger cross-sectional area than the lower portion 24, and a ring 25 of flexible material, suchas rubber, is fitted within the upper portion 23. Slidably positioned in the groove 20 is a plate 26 driven by a lever 30 (best shown in Fig. 3) which engages the plate 26 by means of a pin 31. The lever 30 has a boss 32 which pivots in an opening 33 in the plate 21, the lever being urged to the position shown in Fig. 3 by a spring 34 having one end terminating in an opening 35 in the plate 21 and the other end engaging a slot 36 in the boss 32. The lever 30 extends through an opening 37 in the housing 12 so that it may be manually reciprocated by an operator.

A cylindrical container 40 is placed within the ring 25 in an inverted position, the container having a threaded portion 41 which is preferably a frictionalfit within the ring. Extending downward from the inner surface of the housing 12 is a boss 42 having a recess 43 therein which engages the upturned bottom portion 44 of the container 40, thereby maintaining the container rigidly in position over the smaller opening 24.

A hopper 50 is formed within the base 10 and a pair of rollers 51, 52 is positioned within the base below the hopper 50 so that material passing through the hopper will be fed between the rollers 51, 52.- The roller 52 is mounted on a shaft 53 and the roller 51 is mounted on another shaft 54, the two shafts being driven in counterrotation by mating gears 55, 56 mounted thereon respectively. The shaft 53 extends beyond the side of the base and a lever 57 is rigidly attached thereto by a screw 58. The end of the lever 57 opposite the shaft 53 is provided with a handgrip 60, the lever being manually rotatable through a full circle, as indicated in Fig. 2..

The roller 51 has a concave surface and the roller 52 has a convex surface, as shown in Fig. 4. The rollers are spaced so that the minimum distance between the surfaces thereof is at least as great as the thicknes of the tablet which is to be dispensed in the mechanism, thereby preventing any portion of the tablet from being crushed between the surfaces of the rollers.

The rollers 51, 52 may be assembled within the base 10 by various methods of fabrication which will occur to one skilled in the art. A preferred construction is illustrated in the drawing, with the base 10 divided along a horizontal plane passing through the axes of the rollers into an upper section and a lower section 81. A peripheral shoulder 82 on the lower section 81 engages a mating groove 83 in the upper section 80 to maintain the sections in alignment, the sections being held together by screws 84 after the rollers are placed in position in the lower section.

A lower portion 63 of the hopper 50 has an opening 64 atthe bottom thereof. The base 10 includes a tray section 65 located below the opening 64, the tray being shaped to support a glass 66 and to guide the glass into position below the opening 64. A spring element 67 having a convex-shaped edge is mounted on the wall of the hopper 63 beneath the roller 51 so as to, urge the convex edge of the spring into contact with the concave sur face of the roller. A second spring element 68 having a concave edge is mounted on the wall of the hopper 63 beneath the roller 52 so as to urge the concave edge against the convex surface of the roller 52. An opening rollers when the housing 12 is removed for cleaning and similar purposes.

In the operation of the dispenser, the container 40 having a number of frangible, wafer-like tablets 70 therein is placed upside down in the ring 25 and the housing 12 is put in position on the base, the recess 43 engaging the bottom 44 of the container. The now bottommost tablet 71 is in the lower portion 24 of the opening 22, resting on the plate 26. The plate 26 is dimensioned so that it is a snug fit in the groove 2t), thereby nearly completely sealing off the interior of the container 40 from the surrounding atmosphere, the ring 25 performing a similar function at the upper end of the opening 22. The lever 30 is moved in a clockwise direction, as viewed in Fig. 3, by the operator, thereby moving the plate 26 away from the opening 24. The tablet 71. then drops down into the slot 213, the depth of the slot 20 being slightly greater than the thickness of the tablet. The lever is then released by the operator and the plate is returned to its normal position by the action of the spring 33, thereby sealing off the bottom of the opening 24. The motion of the plate 26 also pushe the tablet from the slot into the hopper 50, as seen in Pig. 2, the tablet being designated by the numeral 72. The plate 26 has a chamfer '75 on the edge which pushes the tablet into the hopper so that theplate will slide underneath the next tablet above.

After releasing the lever St), the operator then rotates the lever 5'7 in a counterclockwise direction, as viewed in Fig. 2, thereby running the tablet 72 between the rollers 51, 52. The fractured segments of the tabletfall through the opening 64 into the glass 66, the spring ele- .ments 6'7 and 68 serving to prevent the adherence of tablet particles to the surfaces of the rollers.

An important feature of this dispenser is the type of action produced by the rollers. The spacing between the rollers is preferably such that no crushing action occurs therebetween. However, the curvature of this space re quires that the tablet be fractured into a plurality of smaller segments in order to pass between the rollers. The relation between the shape of the tablet and the shape of the openings is shown in a greatly enlarged view in Fig. 6. While the particular curvature of the surfaces of the rollers is not critical, it is necessary that the curvature and the spacing between the rollers be so related that the tablet cannot pass through intact. In Fig. 6, the spacing between the surfaces of the'rollers is shown as being constant along the length. of the rollers and also slightly greater than the thickness of the tablet, this being the preferred configuration. A tablet of the type handled in the dispenser is shown in Fig. 5a, with a reconstructed, fractured tablet illustrating the type of segments produced by the invention being shown in Fig. 5b. It should be noted that there is only a very small amount of pulverized material produced by the invention, resulting in an improved quality drink.

Although an exemplary embodiment of the invention has been disclosed and discussed, it will be understood that other applications of the invention are possible and that the embodiments disclosed may be subjected to various changes, modifications and substitutions without necessarily departing from the spirit of the invention.

I claim as my invention:

l. in a dispenser for frangible tablets of uniform size and a particular thicknes and stacked in a container, the combination of: a base having an opening in an upper surface thereof, said opening extending part way through said base, said opening being adapted to receive the open end of a tablet container; transfer means mounted in said base and having a normaland an operate position, said transfer means closing the lower end of said opening when in said normal position; a hopper located within said base including a conduit connecting with said lower end of said opening, said transfer means moving a tablet through saidconduit into said hopper as said transfer position; a pair of counterrotating rollers positioned in said hopper, one of said rollers having a concave surface of revolution, the other of said rollers having a convex surface of revolution, the distance between said surfaces being at least as great as the thickness of the tablet being dispensed and less than that which permits a whole tablet to pass between said rollers, said rollers blocking the passage of the whole tablet through said hopper; and drive means for counterrotating said rollers with theadjacent surfaces of said rollers moving downward.

2. In a dispenser for frangible tablets stacked in a container, the combination of: a base having an opening in an upper surface thereof, said opening extending part way through said base, said opening being adapted to receivethe open end of a tablet container; transfer means mounted in said base and having a normal and an operate position, said transfer means closing the lower end of said opening when in said normal position; a hopper located within said base including a conduit connecting with said lower end of said opening, said transfer means moving a tablet through said conduit into said hopper as said transfer means moves from said operate position to said normal position; a pair of spaced counterrotating rollers positioned in said hopper, one of said rollers having a concave surface of revolution, the other of said rollers having a convex surface of revolution; drive means for counterrotating said rollers, the adjacent surfaces of said rollers moving downward; and a housing mounted'on said base and enclosing the upper portion thereof, said housing including a recessed portion in its inner surface adapted to engage and index the closed end of a tablet container when the open end of the tablet container is placed in said opening in said base.

3. in a dispenser, the combination of: base means; storage means associated with said base means for retaining a plurality Ofsubstantially flat, uniform, frangible tablets of a particular thickness; a pair of rollers associated with said base means and positioned below said storage means, the axes of said rollers being parallel, one of. said rollers having a convex surface of revolution and the other having a concave surface of revolution, said surfaces being spaced apart substantially the thickness of one of said tablets; means for singly feeding said tablets to the upper portion of the space between said rollers; and means for simultaneously rotating said rollers with the surf-aces of said rollers which define said space moving downward so as to break the tablet therein into pieces small enough to drop through said space.

4. In a dispenser, the combination of: a base including an opening in an upper surface thereof, said opening being adapted to receive the open end of a tablet container; a movable housing mounted on said base and enclosing said upper surface, said housing having internal indexing means for engaging the closed end of a tablet container when the open end thereof is engaging said opening in said base; a pair of spaced rollers Positioned at a level below said opening; feed means for singly feeding tablets from said container to the space between said rollers; and means for counterrotating said rollers with the adjacent surfaces thereof moving downward.

5. A pair of spaced rollers for use in tablet dispenser having means for feeding tablets of a particular thickness to the space between said rollers and means for counterrotating the rollers with the adjacent surfaces' of said rollers moving in a downward direction away from such tablets, one of said rollers having a concave surface of revolution and the other of said rollers having a convex surface of revolution, the distance between said surfaces being at least as great as the thickness of the tablet being dispensed and less than that which permits a whol tablet to pass between said rollers.

(References o s Page) References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS Oliver Aug. 9, 1881 Bowers Mar. 4, 1884 5 Wall Nov. 1, 1887 Klein Nov. 7, 1905 Lobley Nov. 30, 1937 6 Schuhmann Jan. 16, 1940 Boylan Nov. 23, 1943 Latture Jan. 27, 1948 Jackson May 2, 1950 Rudolph et a1. Oct. 17, 1950 FOREIGN PATENTS Germany Oct. 25, 1910 

